What are some not-so-developed aspects of South Korea?

building intercoms and the buzzer thing is so real. i'd add apartment address systems in general. lots of older villas and officetels still run on those keypad door locks where the code never gets changed between tenants, so basically every ex-resident knows how to get in. nobody thinks twice about it.

also the whole delivery address situation. you can order something in 2 hours but half the time the courier calls you because the road name address doesn't match what's in some database, and you end up texting them "3rd floor, above the convenience store, blue door." korea switched to the new address system years ago but a ton of places, including some government forms, still run on the old jibeon numbers, so you basically need to know both.

and fwiw the recycling thing. seoul is strict about separating everything but the actual system is just a guy in a truck and a pile of bags on the curb at 6am. no real infrastructure, just social pressure and fines.

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The soap thing is real but what gets me more is the complete absence of hand dryers or paper towels in a lot of places. You wash your hands and then just... stand there. I've gotten into the habit of carrying a small towel in my bag, which is apparently a very Korean thing to do anyway.

Card security I'd actually push back on a little. The reason tap-to-pay and no-PIN works here is that card fraud rates are genuinely low and the card companies eat the losses, so nobody's motivated to change it. It's less "undeveloped" and more a different risk tradeoff. That said, trying to pay with a foreign card at a small restaurant or a taxi is still hit or miss, which surprises people who assume Seoul is fully cashless.

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Medical stuff is where I notice it most. Walk into a clinic and it's paper charts, fax machines, and you pay in cash at a little window, then they hand you a CD or a USB with your X-ray on it. Meanwhile the same hospital will have a slick app for booking. Also pharmacies here still hand-count pills into little paper packets by hand rather than dispensing sealed strips, which is charming until you realize how much room there is for error.

And nobody talks about how hard it is to get anything done if you don't have a Korean phone number or ARC. So much of the "developed" convenience is gated behind identity verification tied to a resident registration number, so the whole system feels seamless if you're local and completely walled off if you're not.

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the whispering thing is real but its not about the sauce lol. that guy runs a 2am handoff with the chicken supplier, they drop off fresh birds from a farm near Chuncheon three times a week instead of using the frozen stuff most hongdae spots rely on. thats why the texture hits different, not the sauce itself. if u go back ask for the neck & wing combo off menu, its cheaper & honestly the best cut they do

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the thing nobody mentions is that Dogdogdog's sauce gets its body from cheong, the Korean rice syrup, not sugar. thats why it coats the wing so thick and stays glossy instead of going sticky. i asked a guy who worked there and he said they also add a splash of maesil (plum) extract at the end off the heat. that fruity tang under the garlic is what you're tasting. go on a weekday before 6, weekends the wait hits 40 min easy.

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honestly the "secret sauce" thing is prob just marketing. every fried chicken place in Seoul has a version of that story. the real difference at Dogdogdog is they double fry in rice bran oil and toss the wings in the sauce twice, once right out of the fryer and again after a 30 sec rest. thats where the crunch comes from, not some mystery ingredient. if u wanna taste the actual base, order the banban half plain half spicy and dip the plain one in the spicy sauce yourself.

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